


Winter of Life

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Absurd Fluff, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Christmas, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Magic Realism, Minor Violence, Season 2 spoilers, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was an experiment, really. On Christmas, Sherlock wrote to Santa asking for a friend. He got a broken toy soldier instead. This is the story of how he finds him again and again. </p><p>Chinese and Russian Translation Available.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Chinese Translation [ here](http://221dnet.211.30i.cn/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3927) done by fay2205
> 
> Russian Translation [ here ](https://ficbook.net/readfic/3897510) done by Little_Unicorn
> 
> A belated Christmas gift to my Sherlock readers. I hope you like it, despite it's bad writing and ooc characters. I wanted something heartwarming for you. There's not much plot but there's a lot of slow romance. I hope you like it. Happy Holidays, you're all wonderful!

He used to have a toy soldier, one with a broken leg and faded paint on its shoulder that had been scratched away by the cat. It was an old thing with a little rifle that was worn away and bent, blond hair that was now dirty (as if it were greying to match its age) and a silly smile that was barely there anymore but comforting nonetheless to see. The only feature of the soldier’s that had never changed was its eyes, little black dots that glittered in the light and showed more depth than any human eyes (dead or alive) that Sherlock had ever examined.

The first thing Sherlock thinks when he sees Mike’s acquaintance is that this must be his toy soldier brought to life. Except that this human appears wearier than the polished wood and paint of the toy soldier could ever have shown. He’s dressed in an old (and frankly awful) jumper and somewhat wrinkled clothes, far from the respectable red uniform that Sherlock so remembers. It seems out of place on (his soldier) the man but it also suits him. He looks frail at first, but there is something about the man’s eyes, something Sherlock recognizes...

It been a long time since Sherlock’s been this unsettled. The likeness and similarity of circumstances are too uncanny, too similar to ignore (after all, what are the chances that this man is a soldier as well? Only a modern one who fought in Iraq and was clearly shot somewhere?) It’s a coincidence, surely (but Sherlock never believes in coincidence if he can help it, not anymore.) How else to explain it?

But then Mike says, “This is an old mate of mine, John Watson” and Sherlock doesn’t let any of the surprise, shock or disbelief to show on his face. All he wants is to leave, to think on this new chain of events ( _it’s not possible but then eliminate all possibilities and what remains must be the truth—_ haven’t looked at all the possibilities yet—)

Sherlock rushes out as soon as he can, forgetting to introduce himself (for how can he? What if...? What if...?) but then the man calls him back and he has to give his name (only to feel disappointment when there’s no recognition) before he leaves.

It’s silly, pathetic, stupid sentiment but Sherlock can’t help it.

His toy soldier’s name was John Watson too.

-

It’s an experiment, really. Sherlock is in the hospital overnight after breaking his leg (it had been for science, he’d been trying to reach a rather interesting dead bird at the roof of the school) and he’s annoyed by all the holiday junk that is playing on the radio. If he hears another verse about a red nosed reindeer or a snowman brought to life again, he’ll rip out his IVs and drive one of the ambulances home (never mind that he’s not old enough. He’s a genius, he would figure it out.)

But what’s more irritating than the appalling taste in music that the medical staff have, are the nurses that have been tending to him, asking him if he’ll be writing to Santa this year. The answer is no, obviously, but they only laugh and pet his hair (he bites them) while spouting lies that this saint apparently exists.

Sherlock’s disproven the existence of Santa Claus using cold hard facts when he was four. After all, his parents never stood for the farce (even if the maids and the butler enjoyed telling him the lies about an old man with his sleigh) and Sherlock knows it’s not physically possible for a man to deliver presents to all the children in the world with just one night as the time limit. Even if Sherlock wasn’t on the ‘nice’ list, he would be eligible to receive a lump of coal (which he has never seen either.)

When he tells this to his nurse Mary (one of the more tolerable of the staff, if not a bit absentminded and oblivious to reality), she only shakes her head and gives another condescending smile, “Well, have you ever written to him, Sherlock? Maybe he doesn’t give you anything because you never ask for it.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Sherlock crosses his arms. “How does writing letters make any difference? Isn’t he supposed to know everything?”

Nurse Mary laughs, “No one can know everything, dear.”

 _I could,_ Sherlock thinks, _and when I’m older, I will._ But he doesn’t say that because he’s more concerned with showing his nurse that she is wrong and he is right.

“Besides it’s not possible for Santa to receive any letter I write. Tonight is December the twenty third. The post will never arrive at his workshop by then,” he insists.

“Oh,” Mary replies with a secretive smile. “Well, if you write one tonight then I’ll make sure it’s delivered to him right away.”

Sherlock isn’t fooled. He knows that the nurse will probably take the letter for herself, read it and then rush to one of the shops at the last minute to purchase what Sherlock wants as a surprise. Then she’ll probably pretend that it was Santa Claus all along.

No, Sherlock knows how to approach this subject. To show his nurse that Santa doesn’t exist, he will have to ask the old man for a gift no one will be able to get for him except for this all-powerful man. Then he will either receive nothing (in which case Sherlock will be proven right) or a lump of coal (where the matter will still be unresolved in the matter of proof, for it is impossible to disprove a negative. Or perhaps Sherlock has mixed that up.)

So Sherlock agrees, if only to placate Nurse Mary and to have something to do. He doesn’t expect his parents to visit and Mycroft is busy with schoolwork.

He couldn’t care less of how the letter begins and ends, so Sherlock sloppily writes that he would like to have a friend, someone who will be loyal to him and listen, someone who will stay. Sherlock ignores the funny feeling in his chest (probably a side effect of hospital medication) when he signs it and then seals the parchment in an envelope.

Nurse Mary is overjoyed when he hands it to her. She pats his arm, “Now don’t you worry, dear. Your Christmas wish will come true.”

Sherlock doubts it. Likely, the nurse will be dismayed when she reads his letter and have no choice but to give him nothing. (And she does give him nothing, as Sherlock can tell when he interrogates her later.)

To his surprise he finds a clumsily wrapped gift (in newspaper and string) sitting on his blankets when he wakes up on Christmas day. There is a little note taped on the front, saying, “ _I know you don’t believe, but I thought you’d like a gift anyways just to give you a little bit of cheer during Christmas. Happy Holidays_.” The writing is large and crooked, unlike his nurse’s elegant script.

He immediately tears open the gift.

It’s an old toy soldier with a very loose left leg.

Sherlock never finds out who it’s from.

-

He tries to keep his distance from his potential new flatmate, but at the same time, Sherlock can’t help but watch him and catalogue all of John’s reactions. Some of it is disappointing (Sherlock always imagined the toy soldier agreeing with everything he had to say, just as intelligent as Sherlock is, never needing _words_ ) because John seems so ordinary, so much like the rest of the idiots of the world.

But John thinks Sherlock is amazing, John loves the crime scenes and thrill of a mystery as much as Sherlock does, John doesn’t always agree with Sherlock or catch on as quick as Sherlock would prefer but he has a certain view of the world that Sherlock would never have considered before. John is... inspiring somehow, like a conductor of light and Sherlock wants to reach in and fix everything that was broken in him.

And there is one thing that John shares with Sherlock’s toy soldier.

( _There’s a shot, shattering glass and then the cab driver is dead, dead, dead, a bullet in his head, perfect shot, military probably, average height—_ )

He’s extraordinarily loyal.

-

Sherlock hates it, of course. He has no use for such things. He doesn’t _play_ with children’s toys and he would have chucked the silly toy soldier into a bin if the nurse hadn’t snuck it into his bag. Sherlock only finds it again when he’s looking for his magnifying glass and it falls out of the bag, onto the floor.

Painted black eyes stare up at him (almost with intensity, but Sherlock dismisses that ridiculous claim instantly) as its skinny limbs lie against the carpet. Sherlock scowls at it and is about to throw it into the rubbish when he hesitates.

No matter how useless the toy is to him, it is still the first gift he ever received from someone who wasn’t family or obliged to. He knows that it isn’t from a Santa Claus, probably a random passerby in the hospital who saw a lame child in bed on Christmas and decided to take pity on him (judging from the crude wrapping paper, that would be likely.) Mycroft’s words of the disadvantages to caring be damned, this soldier is still _his_ even if he doesn’t him.

Sherlock throws the soldier onto his bookshelf and forgets about it.

Three months later, his mother is shouting at him for being a disgrace to the family (he might have burned down his school’s west wing for a chemistry experiment and then expressed his disappointment that there weren’t any corpses made during the fire for him to study) and Sherlock storms to his room. He throws his books at the wall, smashes his telescope (it’s a stupid thing anyways, he deletes stars) and then he rants on and on about the idiocy of the human race until his voice is hoarse.

Throughout it all, he only just notices the toy soldier that has ended up on his bed, sitting by his side as if it were listening to him the whole time.

Its loose leg is now in large splinters because Sherlock had probably thrown it against the wall in his temper tantrum. And yet, it still sits beside him, looking at him with those painted eyes, as if it wants to offer all the comfort it can.

Slowly, Sherlock picks it up and he glues the wood pieces back together.

The toy soldier is moved from the shelf to a spot by Sherlock’s pillow.

-

Talking to this John and having him talk back is better than conversing with his skull. Sherlock finds himself addicted to it, so much that he begins to talk to John even when John isn’t there. They’ve been living together for several months now and Sherlock has stopped wondering ‘ _how long will John stay?_ ’ because it feels as if they’ve always lived together and that they always will.

Sherlock adores John’s sarcastic comments, his inability to use technology (or get a date,) how he looks rumpled every morning and even his nattering prose for his blog. Sherlock suddenly finds himself wondering, from time to time, between cases, how he ever lived without his blogger in the first place. He has a friend and until he met John, that would have been an impossible thing for him to admit (for he does have friends, even if he doesn’t admit it, but he’s never had a friend like John.)

Sometimes (for a ridiculous and stupid moment) Sherlock wonders if John is actually the toy soldier because how else would he be able to understand Sherlock so well?

But then John surprises him again by talking back, by being ordinary and extraordinary and so _real_ that Sherlock stops wondering.

He got his wish after all (over twenty years late) and he knows better than most how short happiness can be.

-

He decides to name the soldier ‘John.’ It fits him somehow and later Sherlock gives it a last name ‘Watson’ because that seems to fit as well.

Sherlock talks to him all the time, about experiments and bullies and stupid Mycroft and the world. He brings the soldier to school if only to have comfort of the soldier’s presence nearby. It’s the closest thing he had to a friend and it always helps, when his voice fills the silence of the chilling manor, when the soldier’s eyes seem to glimmer back in response.

The soldier is there for him when the Carl Powers case happens, when no one believes Sherlock as he claims that Carl was murdered. He’s too young, they say. Or if they’re Mycroft, then Sherlock’s opinion is a waste of time (he never forgives his brother for that.) No one will listen to a child. No one will listen to _Sherlock_ , the freak in their community.

(His soldier listens.)

He gets a skull as a friend for the toy soldier. They have enlightening conversations about blood splatters, the rate of decomposition and the motives of a husband cheating on his spouse when he’s going through a midlife crisis. They are his only audience (the only one that matters) when he plays his violin into the night. They love every note, even the scratched and butchered strings that irritate his family so.

These quiet and explosive moments in his room are the only sources of happiness (besides the puzzle, the thrill of a case) that he remembers in his childhood.

It all ends eventually though.

-

The pool changes everything. The pool shows Sherlock that he can’t hide his heart, the fact that he now cares, from anyone (let alone the most important someone.)

In the next few strangled breaths when Sherlock sees John in that vest of semtex, all he can see is the image of his toy soldier burning in flames, all he can think is _not this John. No one can take this John from me, EVER_ and he knows that no matter how brilliant Moriarty is, no matter how enticing and interesting he is, that Sherlock will always choose the toy soldier.

Sherlock will choose John.

When he points the gun at Moriarty, he’s not sure which John he’s thinking about anymore.

-

He goes to university. There is drugs and cigarettes, experiments of a sexual nature (no matter what Mycroft thinks to the contrary) to see what stimulates him physically (answer: nothing) and a term of skipped classes. He’s put on academic probation, threatened by his brother to return to his studies and harasses by his mother to act with the proper decorum of the Holmes family.

Sherlock delves deeper and deeper into the circle of chemicals to spite them and to block out the hateful whispers that follow him on campus ( _freak, monster, psychopath_ ) when speaking to his skull and toy soldier are no longer enough. Even the catharsis he feels when he plays his violin is no longer enough to occupy him. If the rest of the world believes that he is scum then he will block them out until all that is left is oblivion and the stimulation of his puzzles.

He ignores the sad painted eyes of his soldier when he stumbles in his room during another haze. He doesn’t look at the soldier much these days if he can help it. He swears that the toy watches him, judges him and pities him. He doesn’t need any pity. He’s not an addict. He can stop when he wants to, he can, he can, he’s a genius, of course...

Days blur. He drops out of university, lives from flat to flat, takes more chemicals. He’s not sure what date it is when it happens.

His dealer storms into Sherlock’s current residence one day, demanding money for Sherlock’s next hit. There’s a fight. Sherlock doesn’t remember. He knows he was injured in the ribs, maybe thrown to the floor. He remembers the dealer shouting in surprise as a red blur fell on top of his face, refused to move and then...

His dealer stumbles backwards into one of Sherlock’s candles (he can’t afford the electricity bill, he forgets to pay.) The flame leaps eagerly across the floor, hungry for any fuel, eats at the dealer’s hair, his face and the toy soldier that has stubbornly clung to said-face.

The fire spreads quickly.

Firefighters come in (their neighbours had called the emergency line in panic from the smoke) and save Sherlock and his dealer.

They never find the soldier.

Only ash.

-

Sherlock is staring despondently at the fireplace, feeling numb from the news of Irene’s death. He doesn’t understand why he feels like this. Irene was no one, just a woman, a brilliant woman who understood his intelligence and was a source of intellectual stimulation. And yet he cared for her, enjoyed their back-and-forth banter. She was... she was another friend (but not like John, no one can be like John.)

Speaking of him...

“Yes?” Sherlock says, gaze never leaving the fire. He can observe his flatmate just as efficiently from his peripheral vision.

John is hovering by his armchair with a package wrapped hastily in old wrapping paper. He clears his throat and hands it to him.

Sherlock frowns, “You already gave me your obligatory gift this Christmas. There’s no need for—”

“Just open it,” John scowls, crossing his arms when he comes to sit in his chair.

“If this is a ploy to ‘cheer me up’ as Mrs. Hudson and you have planned, I will tell you again that there’s nothing to ‘cheer—”

“Oh for God’s sake, Sherlock, it’s just a present, not one of your cases! Open it!”

So Sherlock does.

His fingers stop when he sees what’s inside and in his own armchair, John’s shoulder tense ever so slightly.

“...It’s a toy soldier...” Sherlock manages to say.

It is. A beautifully carved and handmade soldier with the same red uniform, painted carefully and with the same level of detail and precision as his last one. This one looks almost the same, only newer, more recent. It has the same intense eyes, winking at him in the glow of the fire, in a gesture of _welcome back_.

“Yes, well,” John coughs, “there’s a figure that looks like you too.”

Sherlock sees the second wooden person in the box, one that looks like a sorcerer from one of those fantasy novels he deleted, except his features are painted to look like Sherlock’s. His wooden doppelganger is wearing long black robes that are decorated with silver designs of the moon and stars. The blue scarf wrapped around its neck is the only garment they have in common.

There are even more figures, ones that look like Mrs. Hudson (a white witch, a healer), Molly (a fairy that seems darkened by shadows), Lestrade (a King), Donavon, Anderson and Dimmock (knights), Mycroft (a dragon) and Anthea (a being of water and ice.) They’re all crafted with the same care, the same delicate features and details.

“...How...?”

John runs a hand over his hair with a nervous smile, “Mycroft mentioned that you used to have this toy soldier or something... and I used to carve them out of wood when I was little so I thought I might make one or two. But I wasn’t sure if you still collected them so I ended up giving you a different gift... then the whole thing with, er, Irene and all happened... and I thought you might...” he takes a breath, “Well, I thought you might like them.”

Sherlock stares, his mind frustratingly blank for lack of a response.

“Of course, you don’t have to keep them if you don’t want them,” John says quickly, “it’s not exactly your interest. I thought you might get a good laugh out of them or—”

“No!” Sherlock protests, clutching the figures to his chest, “no,” he says more softly this time, “they’re... they’re nice.”

“Oh,” John slumps back against the chair. He spares one quick glance at Sherlock before he hides his smile behind his hand, “then I’m glad.”

They sit together by the fire, content in the silence as Sherlock runs his fingers over every figure until he’s memorized their every shape. He’s never been very fond of Christmas. In fact, he’s stopped acknowledging it in the past decade. But this year... it’s not so bad, not so bad at all.

(It occurs to Sherlock weeks after the grief for Irene’s death has begun to fade away, that the style that John used in these wooden figures is the exact same one used for his original toy soldier.)

-

The skull survives the fire but talking to the skull isn’t the same without the soldier to keep them both company. He looks for any advertisements on the internet, anyone who might own a toy soldier that looked exactly like his.

There’s no one. His soldier was unique, one of a kind and it burned until there was nothing left.

Sherlock starts rehab, begins to reapply himself in the pursuit of the puzzle, the thrill of a game, anything to rip away the ache in his chest for the loss of the toy soldier. It’s pathetic; it was just a wooden carving that he kept for no real reason. It was nothing.

And yet it saved his life (and he’ll never stop searching for those painted eyes.)

-

“John,” Sherlock says when they are driving back to London from Baskerville.

His flatmate shakes himself from the urge to sleep, “Hm?”

“You mentioned that you used to make other carvings.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah,” John nods, “it was just this thing I did for Harry. She liked wooden dolls, cheered her up during the Holidays when mum and dad were fighting. I made a lot and gave them away to anyone who would buy them. Made a pretty decent pay from it too. It was fun.”

Sherlock frowns, “Why did you stop making them?”

“Ah,” John looks out the window, “well making them took a lot out of me... and then I was focusing more on my studies... never really had time, I suppose...”

There’s more to the story than John will admit but Sherlock doesn’t know how forgiving John is feeling after that drugged-sugar-in-his-coffee incident (Sherlock is still devising ways to show his remorse) so he doesn’t press on the issue.

“Did you ever give any toys to strangers? Any other children you met?”

“Oh yeah, loads,” John nods, “to the orphanage and any kids who looked like they might need them.”

“Are there any specific children you remember? Injured ones? In hospitals?”

John raises his brow, confused about the questions but he answers anyways, “Yeah. There was this one kid I remember, he had a broken leg and he didn’t get any visitors except his brother. It was Christmas time and I thought he could use something to cheer him up. It was the first toy soldier I’d ever made and it was a bit of a rush job...”

Sherlock starts chuckling.

“What?” John smiles, “We can’t all be perfect, now can we?”

“Yes, we can.”

“Oh, you’re full of it!”

Sherlock isn’t talking about himself this time.

-

He never tells John but he carries his two favourite wooden figures with him everywhere, the toy soldier and the sorcerer that looks like himself. He doesn’t talk to them, not when he has John, but he keeps them close as a reminder.

-

The fall happens.

It’s either lose his friends (“John”) forever and keep his reputation or lose them all anyways (but at least they will live.)

The toy soldier and sorcerer are heavy in his pocket as he steps to the ledge.

He knows what he will choose.

-

He’s dead now and the only ones that he can speak to are the toy soldier and sorcerer that he keeps with him always. He talks and talks until he feels as if he might be going insane nonetheless. The heavy weight of tracking down every hit man (and killing them, all for John) begins to wear away at his composure. Some days, he thinks he sees John’s eyes looking back at him through the eyes of the toy soldier and sorcerer. He thinks John can hear him asking if he’s doing the right thing, if John is safe, if he could ever forgive him,

The toys never answer, but somehow, their quiet gazes are enough to keep him grounded, even just for a little while.

-

He’s so tired now.

Moran (the last one, only one more and then Sherlock can go home if John will let a dead man back into his life) lunges at Sherlock with a knife. With practised ease, Sherlock jumps back, moves to jab Moran in the stomach, perhaps weaken him with a blow to the groin but Moran shoves Sherlock down, snarling, raising his blade to stab him in the chest—

There’s movement, something other than Moran and himself, as suddenly, Sherlock sees that the toy soldier has taken the knife to its little chest instead. And the wooden sorcerer is clinging to Moran’s face, scratching at him; it seems, from the screams he makes.

Sherlock has no time to doubt or examine the evidence. He take the knife out of the toy soldier and then cuts Moran’s throat, feeling numb as blood sprays on his face, his clothes, his hands. (He’s seen so much of it for the past three years that he dreams in red, screams in red and wonders who Sherlock Holmes is anymore.)

He dashes over to the toy soldier, staring in dismay at the hole in its chest and the ripped limbs of the wooden sorcerer. Sherlock wonders how he’ll explain this to John, when suddenly, the toys themselves burst into flame, leaving behind nothing but ash.

Sherlock stares at Moran’s body, at the two piles of char and black, with mute horror.

“John,” he says.

-

There’s no one at 221B when Sherlock finally gets back, two immediate flights later. He frantically calls Mycroft (who actually splutters when he hears Sherlock before accusing him of being his own imposter and so on) for any information.

“Oh shut up, Mycroft, it’s _me_. You know that now, stop asking such senile questions! Tell me where John is!”

The other line is suspiciously quiet.

“Doctor Watson suffered a heart attack several hours ago.”

-

John is hooked up to all sorts of machines and looks as fragile as Sherlock feels, lying against white bed sheets in the hospital room. He’s also awake. The beeps of the heart monitor go up, but not as high as Sherlock would expect, when John sees him.

“...I’m alive,” he says because he’s not sure what else to do. What would a normal person say after faking their death to protect their best friend, the man they loved? Then again, Sherlock and John have never been normal.

(And they never will be.)

John’s lips quirk upwards, “I know, you bastard.”

Sherlock swallows and asks, “How?” when he really wants to rush over and hold John’s hand, to trace his fingers over every bruise and scar, every new wrinkle and hollowed cheek, every bag under his eyes.

“...The toy soldier and sorcerer... I put a bit of myself into them,” John replies.

What follows is the strangest conversation Sherlock has ever had.

“When I carve things, I put a little bit of my soul into them, the feelings that I want to project for the people who keep them. They’re not me, exactly, but the feelings I trap in them. Some have comfort, some have laughter, some have happiness. When people are near them, they can feel these emotions coming from my carvings. They can be a peace for a while.

“Don’t misinterpret, Sherlock. The toys aren’t me. Just my feelings. I’m not sure what people do with my toys, I can only know if the owner still has my toys or not, since they’re a part of me. That’s how I knew you were alive, the toys were never destroyed and never felt ‘abandoned’ so I knew you had to be out there somewhere... I’m still pissed off about that by the way and we should talk when I’m out of here.

“But anyways, it comes at a price... I only make them for people I care about because each toy made for a specific person in mind. Each one will protect their owner if they’re in imminent danger that they can’t save themselves from. When the toys die... well, my feeling dies and this happens,” John indicates to the hospital equipment.

“... And you _gave_ these things to me? Several of them?! Are you insane?” Sherlock shouts, unable to comprehend the _how_ and the _why_.

John scowls at him, “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Oh shut up, I died to save your life. You’re not allowed to risk it by giving me your toys, what if I hadn’t taken care of them? What if I had used them in an experiment?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered—”

“ _Of course_ , it would have mattered! It’s _you_ , stupid, kind, idiotic John! I can’t lose you, not after everything I’ve been through. I just... I _can’t_ ,” Sherlock slumps to his knees, puts his head down against the side of John’s bed. The adrenaline from Moran, from rushing to 221B and trying to find his blogger have worn away. He tries not to think of red.

The heart monitor’s beeps echo in the room, measuring each strained moment.

“...Did you really jump off of St. Bart’s to save my life...?” John asks softly, putting a hand over his.

“...Yes. Moriarty was going to kill you. You and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade. I had to do it,” Sherlock whispers, squeezing John’s fingers.

“And why did you want to save us?”

Sherlock snaps up, glaring at John furiously, “ _Why—?_ ” How can he ask such a thing? Isn’t obvious in everything that Sherlock’s done? Can’t John observe—?

From the first toy soldier, Sherlock has made his choice. It was never a matter of ‘why’ or ‘how’ but merely ‘do’ because he had to do what he must to save John’s life. There was no other question, nothing else. It was and is ingrained into Sherlock’s brain and biology.

He opens his mouth to argue, to say everything.

But then he meets John’s calm gaze and he can see that John knows.

“See?” his blogger whispers in return, “That’s why I made those figures for you. That’s why I waited for you.”

They stare at each other, desperate, angry, hurt and relieved—then Sherlock is clinging to John, breathing in his scent and memorizing his heartbeat. He is pressing his lips against John’s head, his ear, his wrists.

There will be arguments, more nightmares and scars. But for now, he just wants to have this moment.

“John,” when he goes up into ash for his love, he wants his last word to be ‘John.’


End file.
